


caught in the bone

by rhymae



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Blood and Violence, God Complex, M/M, POV Second Person, Poisoning, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Purging, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, self destruction on the pathway to self construction- the Izaya Orihara story, when becoming a legend is more important than living it through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21950233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymae/pseuds/rhymae
Summary: Shizuo says, hand on your wrists, unsure like he doesn't know how he wants to ask exactly what he wants to know: “What the fuck did you do now?”And isn’t it funny, how he still doesn’t understand it— exactly how far you are willing to go. How prepared you are to take a thing apart just to piece it back together the way you want it.You fall together the same way Shizuo watches the seconds tick by, and the pattern comes down to this: you have always been a martyr for the things you know you’ll never get to have.Or, Izaya, disillusion, and knowing no one else will burn that pyre for you.
Relationships: Heiwajima Shizuo/Orihara Izaya, Kishitani Shinra & Orihara Izaya
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	caught in the bone

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing: read the tags, heed the warnings. This can potentially be very triggering.
> 
> “So much can’t be  
> put back together  
> To burn the house down  
> to burn the house up  
> It’s the same problem  
> in any direction  
> You’re matter  
> You turn on the light”
> 
> \- Heather Christle

There are a lot of things you know of that could tear this city to the ground.

Some you have had your hand in, and some are only your hands. The little silver ring on your forefinger that you could twitch one second and have a gang at your feet the next. 

It’s so simple. Easy like a two headed snake.

Easy as the fingers down your throat. Like Shizuo’s wrists, too far twisted with yours to peel apart unscathed.

One, two, three doses of poison and how nothing’s strong enough to keep you down forever. 

You know a lot of things, and you know even more about what it would take to change them.

And that is the trick. The thing that no one gets, not Shizuo and nearly Shinra. Not between the alley way chases or all the knives you’ve stabbed through his thigh until one of you went running to Shinra:

Fixation and variation, for you, have always been more than the twisted side of a very bloody coin.

.

The first time, or, to rephrase, as it’s not exactly the _first_ of the first time you let the idea slip into your mind, it’s more like when the idea became more of a suggestion to an act you’ve already played a part in, you are on a job.

You’re hired to find a name for the yakuza, and it’s so easy it would almost be insulting if you didn’t know Shiki personally.

It’s standard procedure, easy and nothing you haven't already perfected before leaving Rajji, and it takes you here: collecting information from thin glass cups and too expensive whiskey. 

The nightclub booms like it wants to eat everything inside of it whole, but it’s the lights that make everything feels like it’s on fire. 

It’s irresistible, maybe. That’s what you come back to. And _Irresistible_ ties up there with _unattainable_ and you have always been a martyr for all the things you know you’ll never get to have.

Shiki had said, in the job’s notes, in person, driving you up to the doors himself: “Don’t get caught. Keep it clean, Orihara, and come back with the name.”

  
  
Like you were sloppy, or like he knew something you didn’t yet and was waiting for the fallout. Neither landed well with you, but you aren’t immature enough to slam the door in your exit.

You are smart enough to know better, obviously. Druggies make for poor informants, addiction leads to dependance, and you’ve always been too immersed in the idea of never needing anyone to give into either.

But to get to the boss you have to slip the first drink back. And a dire conversation rests between a second glass that leaves the name you came for on the line.

The club plays around you all the way through, even after you bought the bottle. Even after you moved your lips in the shape of the name you came for. And all the while it felt like the club’s eyes were on _you_ , that they were here for _you_.

Cranberry liquid smeared across your mouth and with it came attention from the humans you love so much. It came with names and information and the ability to shape things in your favor. 

Maybe it was inevitable that it fed into something bitter too quick. The feeling of being wanted shifted into something that left you with a need for more of it.

The drinking is fine, you think.

It wasn’t your favorite part. _That_ was something else, something like a switch flipping in your mind, like a connection made between two anomalies, that made it better. Something that you don’t name.

It’s when your bent over in your apartment bathroom, half your stomach caught somewhere between the toilet and the other caught in your hand, when the switch flips itself off, that you think: _oh._

And it clicks, maybe a little more than you ever wanted it to. 

There are no phone calls, no notes of concern littering your doorway. You don’t need any. You didn’t ask for them.

You sell Shiki the information, smile and look him right in the eyes. He nods, your smile widens, and the city goes on.

You last a total of four and a half hours before your fingers are back down your throat.

  
  


.

  
  


Poison is something you’d play with in high school.

When Nakura was knocked out of the picture and Shizuo learned a new route to disappear down for the week, you thought it’d been a good idea to twist around with.

Shinra laughed when you’d asked him for some, at the way you listed poisons down, the way you’d plan out their symptoms: _arsenic, cyanide, ricin._

Debilitation, hyperventilation, dissociation, all the side effects that you’d try until you’d experienced all you could with them.

Shinra had said, smiling the same as he had with a knife in his torso, “You really have a habit of self-destruction.”

And then, right on its heels like it was obvious: “God help us if you ever decide to focus it into anything else.”

He was smart enough to shut up, after that. To know just how close you were to the line and how much it would take him right over with you.

Shinra didn’t question after that, and you didn’t ask. Shinra provided what you wanted, and you popped them back, recorded the symptoms as payment. And that was that.

There was no savior story because you never needed one. You knew your own body best, and even the few times you got a little too close to slipping, you never slipped on a job and Shizuo never caught you in the chase.

One time, still always running even right outside of your latest trade with Shinra, when you thought maybe you had gotten the dosage incorrect, Shizuo had looked at you afterwards- face twisted up in a mess of disgust and unwanted intrigue.

It was beautiful. It wasn’t the first time you had attributed beauty to a monster.

You wiped away the blood crusted around your mouth, blending it in with the torn skin across your lips, and Shizuo asked: “What the fuck happened to you?”

  
  
You had made sure to aim your next cough so that the blood dripped directly onto his shoes. 

And that, again, was that. Shizuo erupted like a thunderstorm, and you laughed loud enough to clear your running path for the incoming disaster trampling your wake.

No time for false concern with a monster on your tail and poison licking up your veins.

Truly, all the scattered skin crusting over your lips, the lines across your fingers and discoloration you had made your peace with staying, threw themselves down to this:  
  


Invulnerability sounded like the quickest way to godhood you could manage, so you took it. 

Of course, there is something to be said for that: how ready you were to lose, trying to gain it all first.

  
  


.

  
  


Here is one thing you love so much you feel like you’re choking on your own hate for it: unpredictability. 

You despise it almost as much as you crave it, and maybe that’s what lead you to Shinra and the rabbit hole of people you find your name taped to.

No one has ever bested Shizuo at unpredictability. And it comes aimed towards you in moments, in faded passings that blur together into constants that lead you here:

How, no matter what led you here, Shizuo still fucks you like something fragile. 

No, that’s not quite right. You are too many things to each other, but you are not something to be careful with. 

There is no fragility in you, but maybe he’s treading the line like he doesn’t already know you’ve crossed it. Better yet, like he doesn’t want to believe you’ve crossed it. 

Maybe he does it to keep you constant in your game of cat in mouse, or maybe it’s a pact to himself. Once a monster always a monster or something like that.

That one you can accept. 

But _here,_ has led you to this: 

The way you had said you wanted it rough, hands on hands like the fists you’re so familiar with on the streets, but Shizuo’s face darkened when you did and now you’re here— spread apart and together in a pile you don’t try to decipher. 

Shizuo says, _Izaya_. Broken off into something sweet on your tongue. 

You don’t think anyone has ever said your name like that before. 

Like a prayer with an answer, delivered in the same voice that bellows it as a curse across buildings, only a few octaves lower. It sets you on fire. 

You didn’t know you could be a flame until Shizuo made you into one, and you don’t ever dream of turning back. 

Shizuo says something else and he’s looking for a reaction, you know, so you smile, coo: “I’m listening, monster.” Even though you both know you aren’t.

You say it like it will ease whatever is building there when Shizuo looks too closely at your mouth,or when your shirt snags on the sleeve before you can pull it back down again. 

When you’re both done, Shizuo lights a cigarette before he stands.

You think of high school, Shinra and cyanide and laughter down the halls as if you could imprint yourself there as proof. 

How easy it would be for that poison to tear apart anything else besides the monster surrounding you. 

How easy you almost caved to it. Like no matter how you did what you had done, you would still be weaker. Not weak but not what you wanted either. Your fingers twitch.

When Shizuo turns, you throw the glass vase sitting on your nightstand at his head. 

You miss, of course. Like you intended, the vase shatters above the doorway and sharpened clear glitter pours down into blonde.

It doesn’t stop Shizuo an inch. Not when he turns around, obviously unimpressed, and not when you smile too sweetly in response, leaning onto your hand when you say: “Oops, I’m terribly sorry. I was aiming for your eyes.”

Even hours later, you swear you can still hear the echoes of laughter in your bedroom, can still smell the faint traces of almonds.

  
  


.

  
  
  


Shizuo has a habit of meddling. 

Shinra has a habit of giving away information that isn’t his and scattering it around like candy.

Something about a gang member’s comment told you about the jump, and Shinra is wise enough to hide you in his room when Shizuo stumbles in, mumbling about poison on a knife and _a lot of fucking cuts_.

There's something about Shizuo’s blood on someone else’s hands that makes your body run cold.

Shinra’s smile is near audible when he says, “Oh, I’m sure it’s not enough to take you out. But I’ll take a look anyway.”

Shizuo snorts, and maybe he doesn’t think before he opens his mouth, or maybe he’s done too much thinking when he says: “How the fuck does someone even get their hands on this shit.”

Another time, the question would be nothing. But you, standing in the arc of Shinra's bedroom with a vial in your hands lands, still warm from Shinra's, must land a little too close.

It’s icy, how quickly the demeanor of the room dissolves. It reminds you of Nakura, of middle school and too sweet promises. Shinra torn between himself and a double edged blade.

So when you hear Shinra say, clinically, professional for maybe the first time since you have ever known him, after Shizuo asks the question you know now that he has been trying to find a way to form for months in a fit of carelessness: “I don’t think that’s something you really want to know.”

  
  
You know he’s done something far worse.

Shizuo doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to.

You wait in Shinra’s bedroom, stitches ripped and bleeding from how tense you hadn’t realized you’d become since Shizuo opened his mouth.

Five days later, when there are three more knives in Shizuo’s back than your usual fights, neither of you point them out.

That you disappeared before he could so much as yell your name is, of course, a playing factor.

  
  


.

  
  


Ikebukuro freezes into hell at night. 

You knew this, and you still took the job that you knew would run you out late.

You hate the cold. Ikebukuro can be so beautiful when it’s not frostbitten, but the city loves to challenge you, to prove you wrong. 

You still take it, of course. Nothing changes to you unless you let it, and you haven’t opened the gates for Ikebukuro yet.

So you keep what you came for the same as ever, at first:

You don’t take the usual escape route back to your apartment. Instead, you pass the place you’d read about on the chat forums this morning, and this leads to how Shizuo catches you against the railing of some alleyway that smells like piss.

You’re bored, the chat-rooms have remained stagnant for a week, gangs are lulling in the cold, and you’re crawling out of your skin in a way your own body can't placate.

Shizuo says, after he catches you, hands on your wrist, mouth opening and closing like he’s unsure _how_ he wants to ask exactly what he wants to know, like he can sense something in the unease of your stomach, the need crawling up your fingers, until he gives up and his face falls into default anger: “What the fuck did you do now?”

And it’s always that, isn’t it? _What have you done? What did you ruin, what did you taint?_ What did you run into the ground for the sake of your name staying carved into the city’s palm.

  
You say, teasing and faking a pout, too careful even with the promise of fun laid out in front of you: “Who says I did anything? Maybe Shizu-chan is someone specially I wanted to see.”

Shizuo wasn’t wrong to ask. In fact, he’s probably more correct in his assumptions than he’s ever been and it’s almost laughable. Almost.

You have a million follow-up answers, and twelve dance on your tongue to ensure you the reaction you are aiming for, but you open your mouth and Shizuo jerks back too fast, like he’s been burned.

The misplaced silence is enough to freeze you for a moment in turn.

Retrospect, you will think about later, is a funny thing. Not something ingrained enough to prevent, but heavy enough to leave traces of guilt anywhere it can reach.

It’s someone else’s body, almost, who doesn’t move. Even when Shizuo reaches out to lower your sleeves. You could have run then.

When he first moved, you could have shoved a knife into his stomach until you saw it tear out the other side.

Instead, you didn’t move, even when Shizuo presses into the discoloration on your wrist. Even when he pulls your hand up quick enough to break as he looks at the white lines across your nails.

And you think back to the week before, Shinra laughing and listing off signs of poisoning after the ice of the room had melted, when Shizuo was bleeding from a knife doused in the stuff.

It was only when you saw something click in his eyes, like he finally had the words for what he’d been trying to ask, explanations for all the broken skin at your mouth, that you pull out your knives.

Retrospect isn’t satisfying either. Having Shizuo’s blood coating you doesn’t do any of the things to you that it should.

Four days later, Shinra tells you, smiling as he unwraps the bandage coating your wrist, “I hear that Shizuo’s been even more reckless recently.”

  
  
You hum, quiet, because you know Shinra needs recognition before he gets worse.

And Shinra continues, lifting his eyes to yours: “Makes you wonder what was so interesting that it took the monster of Ikebukuro’s focus for an entire week.”

When you leave, you close the door quiet as you came.

Of course, in the translation between the two of you, you both know it means the same as a slam.

  
  


.

  
  
  


This is how time works for you:

  
  
The past and present have never been separate entities. If you take a step into one, the other follows. If it doesn’t follow, it blends.

Poison was never a way to hurt so much as to create the potential to heal. It’s never been about how low you could get but how much further you can push yourself from it.

Same goes for your fingers, and it trailed behind into everything you do like an echo.

Shinra understood the faulty cataclysm, though he didn’t feel the same.

“Why would I think of the past and present as conjoined when they’re influentially based?” He’d asked, moving onto the next topic before you could construct an answer.

You hadn’t had a good enough answer at the time to give him, but now, well, you think that your life would suffice. 

A blend between the past and the present: the proof of irrelevance in outside influences in light of the power from your own.

  
  


.

  
  


Reminders keep you waiting. Strategic hurt keeps you ready.

You meet Shizuo in the heart of Ikebukuro and don't make it look like you planned it when you lead him into the outskirts, the power of push-and-pull at your fingertips. Inevitability like a taste of memory.

You're ready like you’re waiting for it, the moment it becomes enough. Enough to shock you back into your littered skin, to encompass, to betray what you’ve spent your life running from but still trying to catch.

Shizuo says, like blood on your lips, almost caring, almost understanding: “What did you _do, Izaya_?” And your name isn’t the puzzle anymore but the answer to it.

It’s thrilling. It’s the admittance of revelation. 

It’s Ikebukuro on your back and your name paved so deep others will have to scratch it out themselves to see it gone.

Shizuo says, “Whatever it is, you can’t repeat the past.”

And he means, we can’t keep doing this. 

Or, you’re running out of chances. 

Maybe even: we’ll burn this city through at this rate, before we’re even done with it.

And isn’t it funny, how he still doesn’t understand how far you are willing to go. How prepared you are to take a thing apart just to piece it together the way you want it. 

You laugh, let the motion wrap around the words and feel the closest to your body that you have in so long when you shake your head. 

You say, certain, the idea stuck like a shadow, “No, I assure you that I can.”

And you think, _you brought out the worst in me._

Then, colder, like a flame on your tongue: _and we survived it, all of it._

Shizuo says something else, and you can’t make it out.

He barks it like an order you both know you won’t try to listen to. What you have is what you’ve made for yourself, and no one can touch that outside of yourself unless you let them.

You’re giddy and quick, knives in your hands and feet already across the pavement on the other side, and you say, sing-song and lilting: “Something’s gotta give, Shizu-chan.” And you both know will won't bend from you.

You aren’t foolish enough to think you’ll win here physically, but memory means just the same, you think, just before you twist the knife caught around your finger.

When you walk home, ten miles from Ikebukuro and four bruised ribs to prove it, the blood coating your hands keeps you warm. 

  
  


.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> “We know nothing can be whole  
> that hasn’t been torn.
> 
> There is no holy thing  
> that hasn’t been betrayed yet.”
> 
> \- Julia Kasdorf, “Sixth Anniversary”
> 
> The pealing at the mouth and white lines on nails are symptoms of arsenic poison. The discoloration is a symptom that was versatile enough to include. Blood is because, well, if you're drinking poison, it's not going to be kind on your throat.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed, and comments and kudos are so appreciated; they make me very happy. You can find me @rhymaes on tumblr.
> 
> This has been sitting in my drafts for ages, but I finished reading @tin_girl's "The Gift of Hands" and it inspired me to finish this piece. Izaya, poison,and a god-complex? I couldn't resist.


End file.
